MANITOWOC – Gliding up a ramp and kicking off a trick with a skateboard is Kris Koubaddy's favorite thing to do when the weather is nice, and he is working to expand the skatepark in Manitowoc so others can enjoy it, too.

"Part of what I think about when I work on this stuff … if we can get more kids interested in skateboarding or biking or whatever they end up doing, I think that is a positive thing for the community," said Koubaddy, director of the Friends of Manitowoc Skatepark.

His goal is to raise $90,000 to purchase and install new equipment in the skatepark at Miracles Park on Dewey Street. The additional equipment would give users the chance to flow back and forth on the ramps with momentum, instead of running and pushing themselves up each ramp, as they do now.

Koubaddy has been skateboarding for 18 years. He grew up in Manitowoc and was excited when the skatepark was first built in 2005. Now, he is working with friends to make the park better with additional equipment.

"For me, it's like my favorite thing to do, I love it," he said. "I started when I was 16, and, up until that point, I didn't have anything that I ever really truly loved doing and I wasn't that confident of a kid. To me, skateboarding made my life a million times better than it would have been without it."

The City of Manitowoc and the West Foundation have already contributed money adding up to $70,000 toward the park expansion.

"Our hope is that just by making people and businesses aware of this, that we can get the last $20,000 in donations relatively quickly so we can get this done as soon as we can," Koubaddy said.

This effort began almost a year-and-a-half ago when a tree fell in Miracles Park and took out a portion of the fence around the skatepark. One of Koubaddy's friends approached the city about fixing the fence and asked if they might consider purchasing more equipment for the skatepark.

Koubaddy said various meetings with city leadership went well.

"They were super supportive … I think they were just happy to get people that were interested in doing something," he said.

While the skatepark does have a strong host of visitors each year, Koubaddy said the additional equipment would entice more people to come use the park.

"The better the park is, the more people are going to want to use it," he said. "For a relatively small amount of money, we would be making the skatepark much, much better."

He said people may even come from out of town to use the park.

"The thing about skateboarding is every park is different," he said. "There are these concrete parks in Sheboygan and Sturgeon Bay now. This is kind of an old-school park in that it is not concrete like a lot of the new parks going up, but there will be stuff here that they don't have at those parks. It gives people different obstacles to ride. ... I travel all over the place to go to different skateparks."

With the funds donated to the park, Koubaddy is looking to purchase additional equipment with similar styles and weather-proofing as the equipment already there. He said he hopes to get to the fundraising goal by the end of 2018 and have the equipment ready for summer 2019.